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Michael Longdin
England
Crawley
West Sussex
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The Disco Inferno map for Age of Steam is not as weird as it sounds. Yes it’s been re-themed from a game about railroads and the board is predominantly a garish firey orange but the core rules have not been changed as much as, say, New York Subway that we also played recently. The key differences are
• The cities are now Discothèques and have been re-named along the lines of ‘Quincy’, ‘Chic’ and ‘Gaynor’ (with the towns being called ‘Dancing Queen, Copacabana etc) The cubes for shipping are no longer goods but instead are ‘dancers’ who move between Discos
• Four cubes are placed on each Disco at the start of the game and 3 on each urbanisation disco with no goods placed on the growth display for adding to the board each turn.
• Dancers can be moved in a ‘chain reaction’ providing you have the engine size. Thus if, for example, you have a five loco then you can move a red dancer 2 links to a red disco and then pick up a blue dancer there and move it 3 links to a blue disco. At first this seemed like it made shipping easier (and I think it does promote higher scores) but it can have a detrimental effect towards the end of the game as dancers start to become scarce if you have moved more than one a turn regularly.
• ‘Burn Baby, Burn’: When all dancers are removed from a disco then the discothèque burns down and a black tile is placed on it so that it can no longer be used as a destination for dancers (although it still counts as a link for passing through).. This is probably the biggest change and one you have to be very careful of as the dancer you have been nurturing away in the corner of the board ready for that big ‘6’ move may no longer have a discothèque to visit.
• Production has changed slightly in that you can select two new dancers and place them directly on one disco (instead of adding them to the goods display)
• Note that there is also a written rule that says anyone caught humming or singing a disco song when it’s not their turn loses 1 income. I guess the rules lawyers amongst you will insist on this but if we did, at least one of our group would go bankrupt very early in the game! (How does YMCA go again…..)
Strategy for this map is not significantly different to standard AoS with locomotive and urbanisation being the most sought after actions. If anything, these are slightly more important than normal as the chain reaction rule means that making full use of a large engine is easier and the risk of discos burning down and the additional dancers a new one automatically brings with it mean that Urbanisation is also key - particularly towards the end of the game when dancers and Discos may be scarce. This may mean issuing more shares to try and ensure you get on or other of these actions but it is also true that it is easier to make a profit than on some maps.
Someone on this site said that the map is best for 4 people but there is plenty of space around and although this is the only number we have played with, I would say that it would still play well with 6 with possibly 5 being the optimum number. I thought it was one of the better maps we have played with the discos burning down making it tough towards the end and the chain reaction rule not quite as friendly as it first seems. If/when we get away from playing new maps then this would certainly be one of the first ones I would want to try again.
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